Posts Tagged ‘James Conlon’

VIVA VERDI

Thursday, October 10th, 2013

By James Conlon

Today the world is marking the two-hundredth birthday of Giuseppe Verdi. It started already last night (he may have possibly been born in the evening of October 9). In either case, it really has been going on all year, and well it should.

Verdi has been with me my entire life, since hearing my first opera, La Traviata, at eleven years old. Not just the composer, but also the man is an immense inspiration.  A lifetime of conducting his works has only magnified those feelings.

I treated myself to a weekend in Chicago, to attend the opening night of the Lyric Opera (Otello) and a concert performance of Macbeth with the Chicago Symphony conducted by Riccardo Muti.

Aside from the magnificent performance, Maestro Muti had some very witty words to say about Verdi and Wagner (whose bicentennial it is as well). There was a résumé of those words printed in the program. I quote them in part:

“Verdi is like Mozart–he speaks to us about our sins, our defects, all our qualities. And he is not like Beethoven, who points his finger and judges–because Beethoven was always a moralist…Verdi’s music will be of great comfort for generations and generations to come, because he speaks to us like a man speaking to another person.

“When Verdi died, Gabriele d’Annunzio, the famous Italian poet, wrote a few lines which I think perfectly express who Verdi was: “Diede una voce alle speranze e ai lutti, pianse ed amò per tutti” he gave a voice to all our hopes and struggles, he wept and loved for all of us.”

On the editorial page of today’s New York Times, there are five letters to the editor reacting to a front page article from October 4 entitled “For Better Social Skills, Scientists Recommend a Little Chekhov.” The article, well worth reading, reports studies published in the journal Science.  The study found that after reading literary fiction or serious non-fiction, people performed better on tests measuring empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence.

The last of the five letters published today, written by Kathleen Crisci, reflected my immediate reaction, that one should make a similar study for various genres of music. She writes, “Who could listen to the pathos of a Beethoven Symphony…and not feel empathy and compassion?”

Art, almost by definition, does not need to justify itself, nor does classical music. But those of us who believe deeply in its value, and who live a life devoted to it, might be enthusiastic to see a similar study conducted, if for no other reason than for it to strengthen the argument for renewed inclusion of the arts in our children’s schools.

I do not know if there is any scientific evidence that listening to classical music has the same effect as was noted by the research cited in the New York Times, but my intuition suggests to me that it does. At least I would like to think so. I suspect that a lot of people reading this Musical America blog would also like to think so. And were they to conduct such a study, they should include the music of the king of empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence:  Giuseppe Verdi.

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BACK TO WORK

Tuesday, September 17th, 2013

By James Conlon

Done! My convalescence officially came to an end last Thursday when I started rehearsing Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Metropolitan Opera.

Having recently come through surgery to correct damage from repeated bouts of diverticulitis, the fragility of life is on my mind. In general, I write rarely about myself but want to publicly thank the many friends and fans who have sent me good wishes.

“What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger” is a rough translation of a famous adage of Nietzsche. A crisis can disrupt and then create a new and better equilibrium. I have come through the operation and recovery reinvigorated and determined to live every day to its fullest.

I hadn’t realized until after the operation that I had had a close call. From this experience, I have learned not to ignore the body’s messages. Recuperating from surgery has given me an opportunity to reflect deeply and re-order priorities.

I am thankful to be alive; indebted to the excellent medical care I received from my doctors (both in Italy and New York) and New York Presbyterian Hospital. I am grateful to my wife, daughters and friends, all of whom took great care of me afterwards. Now, except for the predictable post-surgery soreness, I feel better than I have in years.

Yesterday, I rehearsed with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra returning for the first time in several seasons. Just being there was life affirming. It felt great to be conducting again, to hear their brilliant sonority and to be reunited with friends and colleagues.

I believe in the healing power of music, now more than ever. While recuperating, especially when too tired to read, music focused my mind outside the body in a salutary way. I had conducted for months with intermittent pain, which gradually became chronic and more intense.

Mind over matter, I thought, making my way through the marathon schedules of the Cincinnati May Festival and Ravinia Festival, only feeling good while rehearsing and performing. I had “survived” weeks of rehearsals and five consecutive performances of Verdi’s Macbeth in Florence in the Teatro della Pergola (the theater in which the composer conducted its premiere in 1847), as well as concerts in Paris, Rome and Spoleto.  Making music was the only pain-free part of my day. But its almost addictive powers, liked a double-edged sword, proved dangerous. It helped me, stubborn and determined to keep going forward, to disregard pain that was a sign of the seriousness of my condition. I will never do that again.

I want to thank my friends, and even people whom I do not know, for their thoughtfulness in writing to me. Regrettably it is impossible to respond to every individual. I am grateful for the indulgence of the editors of Musical America who have been gracious about my absence from the web site, and who have given me the opportunity to say thank you.

And now back to work, to health, and to music.

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BRUNO BARTOLETTI

Wednesday, June 19th, 2013

By James Conlon Several great classical musicians have passed away in recent months.  Van Cliburn, Henri Dutilleux and Sir Colin Davis have each left an enormous mark on our world, and their passing, in keeping with their international status, has been rightly observed on several continents. Today I offer a personal homage to the conductor Bruno Bartoletti, who died last week in Florence, a day before his eighty-seventh birthday. He was known, and will thus be remembered by those of us who had the fortune to know him, for his extraordinary knowledge, artistic vision, elegance, courage and tenacity. In Florence, at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the many colleagues, musicians and chorus members whose lives and careers he influenced over the course of decades feel his loss. His colleagues and public in Chicago also acknowledge the same appreciation, where his association and artistic leadership saw the newly born Lyric Opera grow into the international opera company it is today. He was born in an age when conductors did not study gestures, podium demeanor or baton technique.  He learned music in conservatory, and then conducting by apprenticeship. He first witnessed, and later participated in, a golden age of Italian vocalism. He embodied many qualities of the conductor/artistic director that seem to be in shorter supply now. He was erudite; a person of broad culture and taste. It was an age in which knowledge of, respect for, and devotion to inherited tradition was considered fundamental. Part of that tradition was the defense of new music. He courageously and tenaciously promoted twentieth-century opera everywhere he worked. The new works he introduced, and sometimes premiered, is long. Today, the presence of many of these operas in the repertory is taken for granted.  It is easy to lose sight of the fact that, at the moment Bruno Bartoletti was defending them, many were not even known, let alone accepted by the public. The list includes works by Bartók, Berg, Bolcom, Britten, Ginastera, Janáček, Penderecki, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Alongside that mission, he defended Italian opera as part of the great patrimony that he, and his entire nation, received as a birthright. He took Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini no less seriously than Verdi and Wagner. He insisted that conducting Puccini and the Verismo composers be taken no less seriously than conducting Stravinsky or Debussy. He revered this tradition and bristled – as I do – at the notion that it is in some way inferior. By happenstance, I was in Florence the day he passed away. I had barely arrived here when I heard the news, and consequently did not make it up the hill for my customary visit. His sprawling villa, with his many scores and books, was situated across the road from the estate of Lord Acton (which now serves as the Florentine Academic Center of NYU). My older daughter Luisa studied there for a year, and I once visited them both on the same day. I am in Florence for this year’s Maggio Musicale, marking the Verdi Bicentennial by conducting the original version of Macbeth in the Teatro della Pergola, the very theater in which the work was created in 1847, conducted by the composer. I was looking forward to discussing the early version of Macbeth with Bruno. He would doubtlessly have had a lot to say. He was the embodiment of an age that took for granted the notion that an interpretative artist’s first obligation was to know, respect and, yes, revere inherited culture, its works of art and performing traditions.  For him, defending those traditions was not in any way antithetical to the advocacy of the new and innovative, demonstrating that there is no contradiction in so doing. By serving two supposedly inimical masters, he showed that they are, in reality, one.

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THE REGENERATION GAP

Tuesday, February 19th, 2013

By James Conlon

A few months ago I wrote about two extraordinary projects in Rome that introduce children, from five to eighteen years of age, to opera. Performances of The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni were presented to thousands of young people by two completely separate entities:  the Rome Opera and the Tito Gobbi Foundation. The method I witnessed seemed to me an ideal model for introducing opera through participatory–“interactive” if you like–performances.

In the course of a recent series of concerts in Berlin and tour in Spain with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, I conducted an introductory program for children (ages six to twelve) of Dvořák’s New World Symphony, excellently presented by moderator Christian Schruff. It consisted, naturally, of musical excerpts, and the participation of special guest, Jocelyn B. Smith, a New York born jazz singer who has lived in Berlin for many years, who coached the audience in singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” while explaining its coded meaning. The cost was four euros for children and ten for the adults who accompanied them.

Not long ago I participated in a similar program in Leipzig with the Gewandhaus Orchester: Alexander Zemlinsky’s Die Seejungfrau (The Mermaid) interlaced with Hans Christian Andersen and the composer’s life as a young man in love with Alma Schindler (later Mahler).

We do all this in the United States, and, in many places, we do it well. But what struck me about the success of these European ventures was the depth of commitment on the part of all the participants; musicians, moderator and parents.

Concerts take place on weekends, so families can attend together. Whereas events organized through schools are often excellent, I believe that arts attendance with older members of the family adds a valuable additional context to the experience.  My septuagenarian friend from Berlin brought his granddaughter with him for her eighth birthday. Two musician friends, who had travelled from Cologne, were joined by their twenty-five year-old (!) daughter who studies in Berlin. On the way out, they told me, they had overheard a little boy, who they had guessed to be about five or six, turn to his mother and say (roughly translated): “That was not at all as terrible as I expected!”

This is a tiny example of how things can be turned around in rebuilding a future audience and in maintaining a great tradition. This is one more young person for whom the beautiful world of classical music has possibly been opened, despite the negative preconceptions that surround him and many others.  The point is that Germans have recognized that the process of whetting an appetite for classical music must begin early and may be best accomplished with family participation. Their systematic and broad commitment to reaching children is exemplary and merits our attention.

And what happens when those children are in their twenties and actually want to go to concerts but can’t afford to? Two striking examples I have encountered in as many months have suggested to me that we can also do better on that count.

At La Scala in Milan, I conducted ten performances of Berlioz’ Roméo et Juliette (turned into an opera/ballet), the first of which was part of a series called “Preview.”  The theater was sold out (sold out!), exclusively to an audience under thirty years old. Top age, thirty years; top price, thirty euros.  La Scala has tacitly recognized and addressed the financial challenge to our young people. It is no use only educating the young and then abandoning them when they cannot (yet) afford to buy tickets. The “Preview” model at La Scala is helping them (and us) foster a love for classical music (in this case, opera). These previews are not rarities, but a regular part of La Scala’s season. The low ticket prices are obviously highly successful in drawing an audience. In the U.S. we face the same challenges, but there is no consensus as to how to resolve them.

Once a year at LA Opera we offer two performances in Los Angeles’ Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Six thousand free tickets are requested each year within hours of the announcement of their availability over the Internet.  This would seem to indicate that “ordinary” people do want to come, and will come, when they can afford to so. It is interesting to note that, though one hears so much talk about how classical music needs a way to “get the message out,” thousands of people do respond within hours when financial obstacles are removed.  This suggests that the message is out—that classical music and opera are things people believe they will enjoy, and when they can afford it, they will come to performances.

The tradition of attending Classical music concerts will have difficulty prevailing, given the many factors mitigating against it, if we don’t abandon, at least temporarily, economic models that may have satisfactorily functioned for the last half century but cannot be expected to do so any longer.

In November I returned to Madrid to conduct the Orquesta Nacional de España. Three subscription concerts were relatively well attended, given the severe economic difficulties at the moment. Given those difficulties, I was struck by the large and very enthusiastic presence of young people in the audience. The Spanish have clearly been effective in developing a young audience that, despite today’s challenges, has integrated concert-going into their lives.

It can be done, and there is hope for all of us in the future.

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Cavalleria Rusticana: Easter in Rome

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

“There is no disputing taste,” “fashions change,” “to each his own,” and “vive la difference.” Certain pieces come in and out of the classical music repertory, while others never get a foothold; still others seem omnipresent. Classical music institutions today have to grapple with balancing repertory over the course of years, to make sure everything that must be played is played; new music that stimulates the muse of our most creative composers is given a hearing; that neglected or unknown works from the past are heard.

I have spent the last ten days in one of the cities I love the most: Rome. I have been rehearsing and conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, one of Italy’s leading cultural institutions since its inception in 1908. I conducted three concert performances of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana (“Rustic Chivalry” is the literal translation of its ironic title), an opera that has enjoyed international success since its premiere, in Rome, in 1890. One of the world’s most popular operas (it ranks as the tenth most-performed work at the Metropolitan Opera), it is loved or scorned by musicians and music lovers; on both sides, many are vocal, few are neutral. It is performed so often that its image, as opposed to its substance, has degenerated in the eyes of many. It is a work that suffers from overexposure, under-rehearsal and performances of dubious taste. It has mostly been offered as the first half of “Cav and Pag,” a marriage that has endured, for better and for worse, since the first decade of the bride’s and groom’s appearances. Though a highly theatrical work, the music of Cavalleria stands firmly by itself, as I think was demonstrated this past week. 

One might ask why someone would want to perform this supposedly hackneyed opera for an audience that knows it so well and probably has heard it dozens of times? I have avoided conducting it for exactly thirty years (since leading a series of performances at Covent Garden) because I was not able to pull together all the elements—cast, orchestra, chorus and sufficient rehearsal time. The added prospect of collaborating with such an outstanding chorus and symphony orchestra also appealed to me. 

It turned out to be sort of a premiere. This great Italian orchestra had never played Cavalleria in public. Its last, and only, contact with the work was more than half a century ago, in 1960! That recording, conducted by Tullio Serafin, and featuring Giulietta Simionato, Mario de Monaco, and Cornell MacNeil, is now historic. But the link with the composer and the city was evident last week. Some nine thousand Romans came to hear the performances, among them Pietro Mascagni (a great-great-grandson) and Domenico Mascagni (a great-grandson of the composer). Seeing them, the distinction between past and present seemed to dissolve for a moment. 

The performances were extremely gratifying. Almost no one in the orchestra had ever played Cavalleria, but it seems to be in each musician’s DNA. That paradox produced extraordinary results. In an age of “international orchestral standards” there is still—thank goodness—a unique affinity that orchestras and choruses bring to performing music of their own cultures and in their own languages. What impressed me along with the sensitivity and depth of the playing was the power of osmosis. Given the surprising absence of performances of this work in the city of its birth, it is clear that these musicians had absorbed this work by other means from the culture into which they, and it, were born. Playing it for the first time, it sounded as if they had been doing so for decades. Conservatory education and professional experience, as essential as they are, do not tell the whole story of the formation of musical artists.

Food for thought: Two things strike me. First, on the assumption that some pieces are overplayed, they actually get ignored. I wonder, in the U.S., how much of our own music we similarly overlook. Do we need reminding that the body of classical music that is North American needs to be performed by those for whom it is an inherited style? Classical music in America is an imported art form. As we continue to develop young musicians on an ever higher technical level, it is important to recognize that, without a parallel commitment to absorbing the cultures from which the repertoire came, we will inevitably drift farther from their essences.

Second, I think it was Miles Davis who said, “It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.” The resonance of the “unplayed notes” of this supposedly hackneyed opera were deeply evident in Rome last week. Mascagni’s first opera, written at the age of 24, created what was to become a new musical language, while depicting to perfection a specifically Sicilian drama. As Bizet, who had never seen Spain, intuited its essence and expressed it in Carmen, so Mascagni, who never travelled to Sicily, captured a part of its soul, and the late nineteenth century’s consciousness, in this sordid drama. The beauty and pwer of this music is still alive and well in Rome today.

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Charles Anthony, No Unsung Hero

Monday, February 27th, 2012

by James Conlon

On February 15, one of the great men of opera passed away. Charles Anthony will be long remembered for the stunning statistics of his career at the Metropolitan Opera: 2,928 performances of 111 roles in 69 operas in 57 years. He appeared there more than any other artist in the Met’s history. For those who love facts and figures, his accomplishments are staggering. They can earn him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records or Ripley’s Believe It or Not. But for those of us who knew him, worked with him, and loved him, however extraordinary the numerical data, it only tells part of the story.

Charlie, as he was almost universally called, brought sunshine into the theater and the lives of his colleagues every day he went to work. He loved opera, he loved his work, and he loved his colleagues. This coming June would have marked 40 years since I first worked with him. I met him the first day of rehearsals for a production of Falstaff, which was in fact my first professional engagement to conduct an opera.

Any singing artist who holds the stage for over a half century into an advanced age is noteworthy. But it is not the quantity of performances but the quality of his shining gifts that is the essence of Charlie’s greatness. His devotion to a single institution belongs to the values another era. It is almost unheard of today among opera singers. He could have had a career singing leading roles all over the world, but chose not to. He incarnated the ideal of an ensemble singer, whose loyalty was to the team as much as, or more than, to himself.

We live in an increasingly celebrity-obsessed culture. Evolving technologies have vastly multiplied the means of distribution that promote latter-day stars. It is increasingly difficult for the public, given these means, to differentiate between notoriety and quality. At the altar of personality, we celebrate superstar singers, instrumentalists, directors, and conductors. As it is easy to overlook the fact that symphonic orchestras are made up of very accomplished individual musicians who are not in the limelight, we must remind ourselves that the core of an opera house is to be found in its orchestra, chorus, resident singers, stage and technical staff, and in the countless individuals who work behind the scenes, literally and figuratively. “Star” singers, guest soloists and conductors are rented for the duration of their visit to an institution, but do not represent its spirit. The true spirit a musical ensemble is defined by its permanent members and constituent parts.

There are many persons, not celebrities, who have devoted their lives to music and the performing arts. Their role needs to be brought back to our attention, lest we forget how essential they are. Just as it easy to overlook the importance of general practitioners, schoolteachers and team players, it is tempting to be distracted by the glamor and glitter “at the top.”

Those of us who are able to practice our art, and earn a living thereby, are among the most privileged eople on this earth. I think Charlie knew that in a very special way, and he communicated it to all around him on daily basis for over half a century. The radiance and warmth he brought to work with him every day won him universal admiration and a special place in the hearts of all of his colleagues. I never heard a bad word spoken by him, nor about him. He reminded all of us how lucky we are.

There are many others in our symphony orchestras and opera houses around the country who, like him, deserve our admiration. But for those of us who knew him, we recognize that there was only one Charles Anthony, and he is irreplaceable.

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A Peculiarly American Paradox

Monday, January 30th, 2012

by James Conlon

Gore Vidal once observed that at a certain age writers turn to politics or alcohol. I am a musician and am turning to neither, but in recent years have found, conversely, an increasing satisfaction through writing. For that reason I welcomed the invitation from MusicalAmerica.com to write a blog on a somewhat regular basis.

 The title “A Rich Possession” is taken from a translation of the epitaph on Franz Schubert’s grave: The art of music here entombed a rich possession, but even fairer hopes.

 I have enjoyed the privilege of a life of making music, which, in the end, is its own reward. The most precious aspect is that of living on a daily basis in close proximity to a great artistic, spiritual and intellectual force. Classical music is a Rich Possession.

 But there is a problem, and I think those of us who love classical music and live in the United States need to see it with greater clarity.

Probably no other country (at least not yet) can boast as many great symphony orchestras, opera companies and conservatories. We are training and producing a stunningly high level of young musicians. The paradox: every arts institution I know is struggling to keep and develop its audience. The arts might need to be repackaged, but without compromising the quality and essence of the inherited art form of which we are the custodians. How and why we have come to have more supply than demand, and what I hope we can do about it, will occupy a significant portion of my future writings.

Will our great country recognize again the necessity of a prominent place for the Classical Arts? How did we allow things to get to this point, and how can we fix it? We are proprietors of a very rich possession…and fairer hopes. Will we know how to maintain the former, and realize the latter? The status of classical music—of all of the classical arts—will not be enhanced without the determined efforts and thoughtful advocacy of those who treasure it most.

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